Samantha Brown at 2015 The Los Angeles Travel and Adventure Show

If you are a travel enthusiast, it is a no brainer that you should have visited the Annual Los Angeles Travel and Adventure show, held last Febuary 21-22 at the Long Beach Convention Center. It is the largest travel show in the country. It is “THE” spot where travelers and families congregate annually to dream, plan, and book their next destinations. You can easily plan for your next vacation by speaking face to face with travel professionals. Not only does the travel show give you inspiration and ideas, it’s also a place for the kiddos to explore activities such as bubble rollers, rock climbing,and more chock-a-block of activities in which my boys definitely had a blast.

Travel Channel Host Samantha Brown

The highlight of my coverage was meeting travel celebrity Samantha Brown, host of the Travel Channel, and listening to her tips on how to save time in planning your vacation. In asking Ms. Brown what she likes most about giving a talk, she replied, “Oh just getting to meet people and kinda passing things on to other people (based on) my experiences. It’s great to talk to people one on one, it gives more of a personal feeling than my show.”

Samantha Brown host of The Travel Channel

Ms. Brown, dressed in a flare gray dress for the event, has been a guest speaker of the travel show for numerous times. She is not only a talented host, but also an eloquent speaker. At the beginning of her talk, she mentioned that her childhood involved road trips because nobody flew in the 70s and 80s. “I actually have a picture of my very first hotel stay, the Holiday Inn bathtub,” she recalls. “When I was growing up, our big summer trip was the Cape Cod.” About quarter a century ago, Brown was a travel adventurer. “My number one piece of travel advice for you,” she said, “For me, what I do is I just go for a walk. I put a map on my back pocket and head out and go to the tourist center. I just love to go where the day takes me. But now, a quarter century later, I had to plan something with me and my family. Back then, I didn’t have the internet.”

Brown also noted about how movie businesses influence the travel industry. For example, the launch of the Hobbit Trilogy. “It is interesting how much the movie business has started to influence travel,” she said. “That is becoming a very serious form of travel.” “Lord of the Rings” was one of the first movies that has taken traveling to the next level. In fact, New Zealand, the country where the films were shot, changed their slogan from “100% pure New Zealand” to “100% pure Middle Earth.” “Just one word of caution,” she quipped. “If someone from Middle Earth should recline on their seat, just let them. I would not say anything.”

Popbuff blogger interviewing Travel Channel’s Samantha Brown

My friend blogger Ted Nguyen with Samantha Brown

Ms. Brown also added “Among other films and TV shows that influence people’s desire to travel are “Harry Potter“ and the HBO hit series “Game of Thrones“. All of a sudden kids would ask their parents to go to Oxford, England, while the “Game of Thrones” hype convinced viewers to travel to Northern Ireland and Croatia, just to see the majestical scenes. However, when asked about that one movie that started it all, launching the entire country to tourism industry, she notes of the Oscar-winning film, “The Sound of Music”.

Going back to how to save time planing your vacation, here are some of Brown’s noteworthy tips:

Have a Travel Guide

Travel Guide gives me a solid foundation for my trip, I have an idea of that this place is about and once I have that solid base for myself then and only then I open the doors on the internet and go to certain websites and handpick information here and there and maybe go to usergenerated website to see what they are saying. If I start on the nternet sphere first, you won’t get anywhere fast, then your vacation becomes fragmented.

Have a Smart Phone

The next thing of course…big change is the smart phone. The apps you put on this, make your life so much easier.
Flight apps like “Flight Aware” is my favorite flight apps. It has a little tab that says where’s my plane coming from and now I can track my inbound flight which is brilliant. Now if my plane is leaving in an hour and I’m checking my inbound flight and its got two hours, I know we’re not leaving on time. So I go to gate agent I confirm that. Now I can go to the restaurant and have a nice leisurely lunch as opposed to eating eating cellophane wrapped sandwich on my lap.

I have apps from Amtrak to United to Delta to hotel apps that in two clicks I can make change and break a reservation. I don’t have to wait in a line for customer service to get that information. I don’t have to go online to figure out what I do to change a reservation. All the information that I would have to go and search comes to me directly and that is brilliant. It has been an amazing time saver.

Pocket earth app is really high rated.Why do people love it? Because most of the features work off line and that is really important when you’re overseas because you don’t wanna pay any sort of international data.

Google Translate, the way this works offline… you just free load the phrase you’re gonna be using and then it works off line

Travelchannel.com
It’s such a help when you see video as opposed to reading about it. You can filter the travel content by the host, by the destination…you just get the detail and it’s not people but places.

Social Media
So many companies are on Twitter – from Delta to Hilton. They have removed so much of their customer service….. the 1-800 #’s and they’re moving to social media. I twitted Delta of how do I get out of here. They twitted back and they said “done.” Checked my confirmation number and then I’m on another flight. So when everyone is waiting in line at the airport because your flight is cancelled or you know you’re going to miss your next flight. You wait in that line, you tweet delta and then you called. But you’re ahead of the game because not everyone is on Twitter or Facebook. That’s how you use these social media tools to your benefit.

Samantha Brown on stage at Los Angeles Travel and Adventure Show

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